Naked Mole Rat Saves the World - October 15th

Middle school is seriously bad enough without turning into a small hairless rodent in times of duress.

And is it true that a Naked Mole Rat Saves the World (by Karen Rivers) (Out on October 15th!)

Though kit (with a small k) has her own problems, such as having NO HAIR since birth, she needs to make life easier for her mom. kit's Mom had a brush with fame with a musical one-hit wonder. Now, she is afraid to leave their building.  So, kit picks up take-out. She goes to her doctor's appointments with a grown-up friend. Luckily, her mother's place of employment is right downstairs on the first floor. Luckily, kit has good friends who seem to understand without explanation.

Then, Clem falls, or is dropped by her twin, Jorge - on nationwide TV - as kit watched, at hom. They failed at their chance at fame as aerialists AND Clem is badly hurt.  In a matter of seconds kit is - whoosh - gone! A naked mole rat races through the building and out on the street. The first time it happens, kit - and probably the reader - wonders if it's not just kit's imagination. Then, it happens again - and again.

 How can kit get her Mom to go outside? How can she help Clem get back to being Clem after that awful fall? There is the small thing about Jackson, too, and the awful thing he told kit. And Jorge, what's his secret? What really happened that day on the tv show? Who is kit's dad? How can turning into a naked mole rat even be a thing?????

These are engaging characters with relatable problems. Readers will see themselves in kit and her struggles. In middle school, all students feel out of place. Friendships WILL change. Kids WILL question their roots. People will say hurtful or thoughtless things. Our parents and our siblings ARE the weirdest. BUT, true friends will remain true. Love will draw families closer together. We all evolve!

Hopefully, we won't all evolve into small hairless rodents.

12 Favorite Book Families

 I finished The Penderwicks At Last by Jeanne Birdsall.  Thank you, Ms. Birdsall, for reminding me of endless summer days of pretending and running and spinning and tracking and...all those things we can do when we are not quite teens. 

1.  The Penderwicks are one of my all time favorite Book Families.  The blended family of His; Rosalind, Jane, Skye and Batty; Hers, Ben; and Theirs, Lydia, grows over the five book series.  Neighbors become lifelong friends or banished enemies.  Summers are long and idyllic when not beset with possible runaways, thieves and sibling disagreements of the mild kind. School years are beset with classroom anxieties and friendship struggles.  

2.  The Casson Family (Start with Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay)  - Mom, Dad, Cadmium, Saffron, Indigo and Rose.  This "artistic" family and their neighbors delve into all kinds of problems from finding one's passion to finding one's soul mates.  The adventures start when Saffron suspects that she is actually a cousin, instead of a sister and she sets off to Italy (!!!!???)  with her neighbor and best friend to learn the truth.  Oh, the madness never stops with these four.

3. The Conroy sisters - also by Hilary McKay.  Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe appear on the scene when they are shipped off to Big Grandma's for the summer, hence the title of their first book, The Exiles.   Phoebe, the youngest, is intractable and endlessly creative in indicating her displeasure.

4.  The Fitzgerald-Trouts from Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts by Esta Spalding. Kim, Kimo, Peppa and Toby are sort of related to each other.  No matter, they live in a car on the beach and every now and then, one or the other of their assorted parents hands over some cash.  The kids look after themselves, cooking, washing their clothes, getting to and from school.  But when the older kids' legs get too long to sleep comfortably in the car, the four head off to find a real home.  There are two books about this crazy family.

5.  The Incorrigibles.  Start with the Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood.  What list of favorite book families is complete without siblings raised by wolves?  Miss Penelope Lumley, barely more than a girl herself, has been hired to teach the three Incorrigibles how to behave like regular children.  They were found in the forests that surround Lord Ashton's estate.  All three children, Alexander, Beowulf and Cassiopeia, are delightfully smart, brave and loyal although their speech is punctuated by howls.  Their governess is beyond reproach and quite a lot of fun.

6. The Applewhites.  Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan.   Jake Semple has one last chance to keep out of Juvie and that's as a foster child at the artists' colony/school run by the Applewhite family.  Every single Applewhite, - parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the lot - has some kind of artistic genius - except for E.D.  Their talents make them absolutely worthless in the real world.  So it is up to E. D., who has a special genius of her own, and Jake, who fits in better than he likes, to keep the "school" afloat.

7. The Stanleys.  (The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder).  David and his three siblings welcome Amanda, their new stepsister, into the family in this first book of four.  Amanda studies witchcraft and beguiles them all.  Then ghostly things begin to happen in their new house, where a ghost decapitated the wooden cupid at the foot of the banister.

We can't forget THESE families, either...

8.  The Blossoms by Betsy Byars. (Not-Just-Anybody Family). Pap is supposed to be watching his grandkids while their mother is traveling with the rodeo. But how was he to know that Junior would try to fly off the barn roof?  Then, HE gets picked up for littering when the tailgate of his truck comes loose.  And Maggie can't get in touch with her mother.  Sounds sad?  It's a hoot.  All the Blossom family books are.

9. The Moffats by Eleanor Estes, Mrs. Moffat has her hands full trying to keep a roof over the heads of her brood.  But they all help whenever they can, keeping an eye out for each other, doing odd jobs, learning to read and write, creating museums and other great stuff.

10. or the Melendy family by Elizabeth Enright. While their widowed father works in the city during the week, the Melendy children are left home with the gardener and loving housekeeper to explore the countryside, rescue an abused neighbor who becomes their brother, travel into the  city on the weekends and create games and codes and mysteries.

11. or the five children or Five Children and It by E. Nesbit.   I enjoy them best because of the sand fairy and the adventures he/she sends them on.  Still without these five siblings we'd never have this classic fantasy.  (Alas, I don't know their names.  I did once.  But I've forgotten.)

12. OR - and here I am showing my age - the Pepper family of Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney.  Totally old-fashioned, earnest and full of "family values", these fatherless children manage to help their struggling mother keep body and soul together while having plenty of "scrapes" and "adventures". 

Motherless Girls

In the last 48 hours (or so) I have finished A Red Herring without Mustard by Alan Bradley,  The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and The Penderwicks at Point Mouette both by Jeanne Birdsall.  All three books feature motherless girls.

People who write about children are often told to "get rid of the parents".  This is why books about orphans are so popular.   I guess writers believe that single mothers are more meddlesome than grief stricken fathers will be.  It's very unfair to the mothers, really.  First, they have to be the dead parent, and second, they aren't allowed to have moments of inattention due to grief and juggling work and home.

Fathers are "allowed" to assume that their children will be all right if they are left alone at the vacation cottage for an hour or two.  A mother would be under fire for this lapse in judgment.  It is a burdensome stereotype and fathers should object strenuously!  If mothers must deal with all that emotional pain and still take care of their families, dads can too!!!  They are every bit as capable of dealing with adversity as the female sex.

Enough for my soapbox moment.  The books in question deal with two very different families.  Red Herring is a murder mystery written, I think, for adults although any savvy reader in grades five and up will enjoy Flavia de Luce, the 11-year-old protagonist, a child with a knack for bending the truth and a morbid interest in poison.  Red Herring is the third book in this series and the first one that hints that Flavia and her older sisters ever had anything but acrimonious relations.  It is the book that made me wonder just why Ophelia and Daphne hate Flavia so much.  The other two books made the hate seem like a funny plot device. 

My sisters are my best friends, almost like the Penderwick sisters.  Still I can remember whole stretches of time - weeks, maybe even months - when one pair of us, or another or all four of us disliked each other greatly.   Clothes stealing and snide remarks and contemptuous looks and slammed doors!!!  Is that what the three de Luce sisters are going through?  I am really far more interested in what's going on in that stiff-upper-lip British family than I am in the mysteries that pop up in their little village.

Meanwhile, the Penderwicks are siblings extraordinaire.  They dote on each other and work together to keep their family running.  The three older sisters are devoted to the youngest who depends on all of them for her happiness.  If Birdsall wasn't such a good writer, it would almost be too treacly (as the British might say) to stand.  But she is a good writer and these four girls are just the antidote to world-weariness.  If your child is reading about the Penderwicks, than you can sleep soundly.  The worst person in these books is the overambitious snobby mother of their best friend.  There is the neighbor's colleague who tries to steal a laptop, too.  He's such a minor character - a blip in their wholesome adventures.

I want more of both families, more plotting nasty deLuces, more loving responsible Penderwicks, more more more!  And while I wait for more, I think I'll call my mother since I'm still lucky enough to have one.